Company That Owns Indian Point Defends Emergency Plan

Despite the findings of a consultant's report released Jan. 10, emergency plans for the Indian Point nuclear power plant could protect the public from a large release of radiation, even from a terrorist attack, an official with Entergy, the company that runs the plant, said today.

The official, Michael Slobodien, director of emergency programs for Entergy's Northeast plants, said at an Assembly hearing here that the company was still reviewing the 500-page report. But he defended the plant's plan, saying the consultant's report contained factual errors and wrongly concluded that the plan could not protect the public.

''I think there is ample evidence the public could be protected,'' Mr. Slobodien said.

At the same time, Mr. Slobodien criticized the report's author, James Lee Witt, a former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency hired by Gov. George E. Pataki, for never interviewing Entergy officials at length.

And he accused opponents of the plant, in Buchanan, 35 miles north of Midtown Manhattan, of driving the public ''into a state of panic and frenzy'' with ''inaccurate and inflammatory rhetoric.''

Indian Point has been a target of protesters and antinuclear activists, especially after Sept. 11, 2001. In the days since the report was released, some lawmakers have been calling for the plant's immediate shutdown.

Mr. Slobodien's testimony came after an official with the State Emergency Management Office reiterated that the state had made no decision on going forward with a normally routine annual certification to federal authorities that the plan was up to date and in place.

Mr. Slobodien engaged in spirited exchanges with Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, a Westchester Democrat who is seeking the closing of the plant and is chairman of the committee that conducted today's hearing.

They sparred at length over how well the emergency plans would work in the release of a huge amount of radiation, perhaps resulting from a terrorist attack. Among other things, the Witt report said that volunteer emergency workers might not respond, roads might be clogged by residents dashing to get away and the plant's computer technology might fail to predict where the radiation was headed.

But Mr. Slobodien said company officials had not seen a scenario, including an attack on the plant by airliners, that would create the rapid release of large amounts of radiation that would render the emergency plans unworkable.

Mr. Slobodien said afterward that he had based his assessment on unspecified independent studies and a 1988 Department of Energy study in which a fighter jet was crashed into a test wall simulating those that surround nuclear reactors.

The jet did not seriously breach the wall, but the relevance of the test has long been in dispute among engineers and came under more criticism in the past two years because it did not involve large aircraft like those used in the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks.

When Mr. Brodsky suggested that airliners crashing into a part of the plant containing spent nuclear fuel might produce a catastrophic release of radiation, Mr. Slobodien disagreed, saying the plant had bolstered security after Sept. 11 and he had not seen scientific data backing up that scenario.

Mr. Slobodien said computer technology recently acquired or soon to be in place would improve the ability to track any plume of radiation. He added that Mr. Witt had overlooked new equipment on the reinforced concrete domes housing the two active reactors that would better monitor any radioactive release.

The emergency plan, written by Entergy, officials from the four counties surrounding the plant and state authorities, might not explicitly cite a terrorist attack, Mr. Slobodien said. But he said it did not matter what causes a release, likening the situation to a doctor treating a bleeding patient. ''A physician may not know what caused the bleeding, but he responds to the bleeding,'' he said.

Koren Bell, a spokeswoman for Mr. Witt's firm, declined to respond to Mr. Slobodien, saying the firm would only accept written responses to the report before submitting its final version next month.

Earlier, Andrew Feeney, the deputy director of the State Emergency Management Office, resisted Mr. Brodsky's attempts to elicit his opinion of the emergency plan, which he had called adequate before the Witt report came out. Mr. Feeney would say only that the report raised important points but, pending a review of the report, he had no ''blanket statement'' on its findings.

Mr. Feeney said he was not sure if the state would send a required certification of the plan to the federal emergency agency by Jan. 31, in part because three of the four counties surrounding the plant have said they will not send required information to the state in protest of the plant. If the agency does not certify an emergency plan because of resistance from the state, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission could shut down a plant, at least temporarily.

In fact, in 1983, the N.R.C. voted to accept the Indian Point plan even though Rockland County refused to participate in emergency planning. The N.R.C. took the action after the state agreed to fill in for Rockland.